Abandoned 454 4 speed Corvette rescue

First test drive with chambered mufflers- it's very loud idling and it's really loud under acceleration. 2500 rpm constsnt speed and its pretty mellow. I'm pleasantly surprised. I thought it was going to sound like a race car.

 

Today's plan is to put the side exhaust covers back on. These things are a royal pain in the ass.

These covers are not really mounted well. They are mounted low and a little too far rearward. It's the way I got it. Now because of the larger exhaust, it's more of an issue. Especially the right side. Here's what my morning looks like-



Trying to figure out how to do this. The cover has to be mounted a little further outboard at the front. So I slotted the front mount a little. The left one is a spare I have for comparison. If this works, I'll do the same modification to the left side



While everything is apart....again, I did a small fiberglass repair to the insulator

 

Thankfully, I have a machinist, a welder and a mechanical engineer all on the same block!

 

First issue with the Corvette. I was waiting what sort of gremlins would show up when I started driving it.

Started hearing a clunk when taking off from a light. Turns out it was a worn differential snubber bushing. The bushing was probably bad 30 years ago.



And if your wondering where it goes, it goes under the front of the carrier to stabilize it. There's a bracket that bolts to the underside of the center section to the crossmember just ahead of it. The bushing goes in between. $32 later and its a night and day difference with the new one.

Put the interior back together tonight too. So unless something else breaks, the car is pretty much done. It's a car again!

 

This week's project was to replace the worn out rear outer spring bushings. The old ones were wasted!

The ammembly manual says to screw the castle nut on till the hole lines up with the castle nut....odd. I guess the tension of the spring self torques the nut lol. They weren't terrible to do.

 

And the odometer broke this week....the little black plastic gear in the speedo head stripped. Another project for this weekend. I guess it'll give me a chance to polish the lenses and replace all the 50 year old bulbs.

I think I'm going to do a thread about speedometers. How to take the needle off and replace the odometer gears. That actually make repro gears. There's also a calibration procedure for them.